European Union and Transnistrian Conflict: Any Solutions in Sight?

The crisis processes in the European-security system which have deteriorated in 2014 due to the Russian policy undermining its basic principles and due to the unpreparedness of the international community for these developments require paying closer attention to the study of the major geopolitical actors. One of those is, undoubtedly, the EU; its foreign policy and contribution to the global and European security building. In the recent decades the EU has worked to take a place in the international relations system adequate to its capabilities and ambitions to play a greater role as a “security provider” . One of the fields in which the EU keeps expanding its activities as a global political actor is resolution of local and regional conflicts in Europe. Although Brussels has certain positive experience of resolving such conflicts , many of those remain unresolved, in the post-Soviet area in the first place. The Transnistrian conflict is one of the most complex and protracted. The attempts at resolving it are unsuccessful, including on behalf of the EU, which is the result of influence of diverse political, economic, social, cultural, and other factors .
Since the 2000s, the period of its active engagement in the resolution process, the EU has adopted an ambiguous position in the conflict of the Moldovan and Transnistrian political elites, which has rendered the attempts by Brussels to influence the parties’ elites, on which the conflict resolution is dependent, inefficient.
The EU enlargement policy is the most effective tool in Brussels’ political leverage on Chisinau’s and Tiraspol’s elites. Offering Moldova the European perspective as one of the means as well as conditions of the Transnistrian conflict resolution would, without any doubt, increase Chisinau’s interest in resolving the conflict, mobilising its efforts to search for ways to reconcile and reintegrate the societies divided by the conflict.
The analytical division of the political and business elites of the both parties at conflict is a complicated and conventional procedure but is necessary for attaining the objectives of the article.
Besides the perspective measures to develop the Moldovan economy, Brussels could increase its efforts to fight grey economic schemes in the region of the Transnistrian conflict. They include, in the first place, fight against corruption in Moldova and Transnistria, increase of control over goods flows, funds, human resources in transit in the territory of Transnistria, drawing up a black list of the companies engaged in shadow transactions in Transnistria and using it.
The first results appear as a consequence. Brussels is prepared to render assistance in the development projects of the local civil society in Moldova helping it directly as well as indirectly by strengthening democracy and rule of law in Moldova .
Concerning Russia’s role in resolving the Transnistrian conflict, it is ambiguous and is determined, in our opinion, by the reasons determining the Kremlin’s interest in preserving the Transnistrian conflict in the frozen state: political, military, economic .
At the same time, to properly implement this policy in the conflict region, the EU needs to attract not only expert, intellectual but also broader political, economic, and social resources and the relevant new tools of its foreign policy. Those tools should be applied taking into consideration the special expectations and ambitions of the main strata of the societies and politicians in Moldova and Transnistria as well as deeper understanding of the complexities to attract the Russian and Ukrainian political and business elites, civil societies, and activists. At the same time, it should be understood that further expansion of conflict areas in those territories threatens to destabilise Europe and the world, could result in escalation of tensions with uncontrolled results.

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